Tory MPs queue up to offer Brown some advice

It wasn't a dream folks: the Conservatives really are 26% ahead.

Yes,  T W E N T Y   S I X.

And in this topsy-turvy world you may like to know some things don't change... Michael Portillo was up to his usual tricks last night and told Andrew Neil's This Week programme that he didn't vote for Boris.

This morning's Guardian has a So what should Gordon Brown do now? feature.  A number of Tories have contributed their thoughts:

• Iain Duncan Smith MP: "Gordon Brown should have stood up to his backbenchers over the 10p tax. Once you have ramped something up you should not back off or you send out the wrong message. He should have told them that he would have expected them to vote for the change, or else he would go to the country and they would lose their seats."
• Richard Bacon MP: "Labour don't just need a new face, they need to do something shocking, and not just offer a choice from some of youngsters round the cabinet who have barely started shaving. I would go for Frank Field as their new leader because he commands genuine respect from everyone. And I would appoint Bob Marshall-Andrews as attorney general because he is a wasted talent on the backbenches and would be a welcome relief to those "speak your weight" machines that make up much of the junior ranks"
• Douglas Carswell MP: "Brown should embrace the new radical agenda of decentralising political power and public services to local people. This would give local people much greater say and control over spending on health and education."
• David Davis MP: "Brown's greatest mistake was not telling the truth about why he cancelled the election, about the 10p tax rate and, yesterday, about Wendy Alexander. The day a prime minister loses the trust of the British people is the day that prime minister is gone for ever. He promised to be frank and forthright. That's what he should do."

Comments

[Alex Swanson]

I absolutely disagree with IDS. As soon as he realised the problem, Brown should have promised to restore the 10p band and find the money later.

A good and self-confident leader knows when to listen and act on what he hears. Brown could have gone to the country and said "I don't claim to be a genius, I got this wrong, I heard and I'm fixing it". I think this would have improved his standing rather than decreased it.

Threatening to call an election only works if people think you mean it. I suspect that in Brown's case he would not have enough credibility.

[Letters From A Tory]

Why are the Conservatives offering constructive suggestions?!

[nobody]

The BBC has finally made mention of the poll (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7391549.stm, giving it a whole 3 sentences.

One of which is 'However, other recent polls have suggested the gap is smaller.' - As though it would be such an important poll if it was merely the same as the rest!? Also, I can never remember the BBC ever qualifying a Labour lead like this and they make no mention of YouGov getting the Mayoral poll exactly right.

[englandism]

Richard Bacon MP:

'I would go for Frank Field as their new leader because he commands genuine respect from everyone.'

EDM 670

ENGLISH PARLIAMENT
17.01.2007

Field, Frank

That this House notes that those polls that have questioned the English report a clear majority in favour of an English parliament; and further notes that it is this issue, and not Scottish independence or even House of Lords reform, that is the issue that voters now put at the top of their priorities for constitutional reform.

Even I would vote Labour if Frank got the nod. Be careful what you wish for ;)

[Alan S]

I couldn't agree more with the comment from Letters from a Tory.

[John Leonard]

What should Gordon Brown do. Resign!

[Alex Swanson]

Why are the Conservatives offering constructive suggestions?!

Well it's not as if any of them are likely to followed ;-)

[Jake]

IDS is tactically correct in this comment. Given that Brown had idiotically got himself into this situation, he should have called the bluff of his backbenchers and stuck to his guns.

As it is, he has lost most of his authority in one go.

[David Belchamber]

Gordon Brown was described on Question Time last night by a couple of people as "a man of integrity". As David Davis so rightly points our:

"Brown's greatest mistake was not telling the truth about why he cancelled the election, about the 10p tax rate and, yesterday, about Wendy Alexander".

There are other important things that he is not telling the truth about as well, the true rate of inflation affecting ordinary people the most being one of them.

It is difficult to argue with Kelvin MacKensie who accused Brown of lying to the electorate. However much the economy recovers, as we hope it will, the electorate should not forget Brown's lies and spin.

[David]

Traitorous stuff from Heseltine as usual. Told someone in the audience that it was nonsense to say that the EU has plans for a regionalised 'Europe'!

[Gordon's Missing Bottle]

Not impressed by the IDS quote either. Although in fairness, the error there was playing tit-for-tat games with the tax system in the first place.

[Norm Brainer]

If conservatives didn't offer useful suggestions then we'd be just as bad as them, playing party politics over the good of the nation.
Yeah it'll be good in the long run that brown does badly as it would then definatley mean a conservative government, but you don't want to be in a whole world of pain when that time arrives.

As they said on 'This Week', I don't know what he's thinking of when he lied to parliament while on live tv about what that Wendy said, when he knew they'd have the clip on standby!

He should be sent to his room without any supper until he's ready to come out and play PM properly.

[Tony Makara]

My advice to Gordon Brown is that he needs to accept that he has a number of problems before he can begin to try and deal with those problems. He should stop claiming that we have full employment and take the 'full employment' claim off the official Labour website. He should admit that we do not have low inflation and give the country a proper figure for the real level of inflation which I estimate to be around 15% and rising. He should stop claiming that people are better off, they are not, poverty has increased under Labour and doubling taxation for the five million lowest earners in our country has only made things worse. He should stop claiming that the Conservative party has no policies, such a claim is ridiculous.

Only when Brown accepts that he has these problems and many more will he begin to have an idea of the monumental task he faces. Every week we see Brown at PMQs sticking his head in the sand and reading out a list of bogus figures, this is a man divorced from reality, lost in his own little world. Its time for Gordon Brown to come out of his self-imposed comfort-zone and face reality.

[Yet Another Anon]

As soon as he realised the problem, Brown should have promised to restore the 10p band and find the money later.
He should have persisted with the tax simplification, but should have raised the Income Tax threshold and announced that the Fuel Duty rise was to be scrapped, he could have made up the difference by extending VAT and cutting public spending notably new planned spending such as for example proposed free annual checkups for 40-75 year old men, for example a £35 charge could be applied to such checkups for those under 60.

NHS Dental and Opthalmic charges could be raised and prescription charges increasingly charged to cover costs and exemptions scaled back.

[David Belchamber]

Tony, at 11.35, is absolutely correct when he says:

"Every week we see Brown at PMQs sticking his head in the sand and reading out a list of bogus figures, this is a man divorced from reality, lost in his own little world".

Blair was bad enough with his mantra but Brown is even less convincing.

Unfortunately, as Question Time last night demonstrated, there are still people who appear to believe sincerely that Gordon Brown was an excellent chancellor.

Wonderful though the Sun poll is, the tories still have a real job to do - which they should have been doing for several years now - in taking the points that Tony makes in his first paragraph and using them to fire regular broadsides at Brown.

At PMQs, DC should get his retaliation in first and demolish the Brown myth before the PM gets up to speak (he doesn't do "replies").

[David Parker]

Interestingly, hardly any Tories have suggested that Brown should keep his promise of a referendum over the Lisbon Con/Treaty. I know Cameron doesn't "do Europe" but many of his MPs do. It looks as if there is an official policy taboo about even mentioning the referendum, or criticising the EU.
Yes, of course taxation and the present economic situation are uppermost in most people's minds, but that does not mean that a very major cause of this Government's present unpopularity, is the cavalier and contemptuous manner in which Brown has dismissed the electorate as total fools who could be taken by his lies and deceit over the Lisbon treaty.

[John F Aberdeen]

I would sincerely hope that instead of advising Brown, our Westminster MP,s are doing everything possible to bring down Brown and get an early General Election.
This needs to be as soon as possible before the do any more damge to our broken country.

Going back to last Wednesdays PMQ,s, DC asked Brown about Alexanders call for a referendum on indepenance for scotland,, Brown replied that Alexander did not support a referendum, despite the fact that her words (bring it on as soon as possible) to BBC scotland had been played over and over on TV and radio that morning.

At the latest count Brown had 7 PR people working for him, all who I imagine have access to TV, radio, internet, text etc so he must have known what she had said before PMQs.
This being the case then Brown has committed the sin of telling lies in parliament. I know some polticians in the words of the late Alan Clark are sometimes "economic with the actualete" however Brown told a downright lie.

I therefore hope that next Wednesday, DC calls a point of order at the start of the next PMQ,s to the effect that Brown committed a breach of House of Commons rules, namely that he lied when answering a question, in which case he should,, as Profumo did many decades ago,, resign.

Now some might say keep Brown in power. I strongly disagree because if Brown resigns the whole government falls as the public would not countenance another Labour leader taking over and assuming the mantle of PM without holding a general election first.

[David Belchamber]

John F Aberdeen at 15.44:

"...namely that he lied when answering a question, in which case he should,, as Profumo did many decades ago,, resign".

On the same tack, is anyone able to prove that he did know about the loans that Lord Levy mentioned in his recent book? Lord Levy accused Brown of knowing about them but he flatly stated at PMQs a while back that he had no knowledge of them.
Are these the David Abrahams' donations/loans (what has happened to that investigation?) that at first were know only to the general secretary but which subsequently turned out to be much more widely known about?

[Dave J]

What should Brown do? Join the Tories: that'll bring 'em down a notch. ;-)

[B.Garvie]

Brown deserves every criticism and invective from angry voters. He has proven to have been a 'nasty' Chancellor when he did a 'smash & grab' raid on private & company pension funds 1997(£5 billion annually).
He is a 'busted flush', does not inspire confidence, lacks leadership skills and has turned our country into a laughing stock. He should go, and go NOW. In the words of Wendy Alexander, 'Bring it on'.

[Essex Boys]

Tony Makara's entry above is excellent. Since 1997 Brown has got away with murder on bending the economic facts. The strength of the position he inherited was never exploited by William Hague and his successors and 'Prudence' went out the window as soon as Brown deviated from the Tory spending plan. We too would like to see DC deflate Brown by presenting the true figures before GB, oh so predictably, goes off with his false diatribe yet again!
Regarding Brown's prior knowledge of the pre-'05 election loans our own excellent MP, Douglas Carswell, with his question at PMQ's has put the PM firmly on the record. Along with many pundits we believe more facts will surface, with the consequences that so many of us want and our country deserves!